Edmund White, the highly acclaimed author and major influencer on gay literature in America, died at the age of 85 on June 4, 2025, decades after his HIV diagnosis that never lead to AIDS.
News47.us has compiled five facts about Edmund below.
The Ohio native authored more than 30 works of literature throughout his life — including fiction and nonfiction books. Among his most well-known were Forgetting Elena, A Boy’s Own Story, The Joy go Gay Sex, States of Desire, The Humble Lover and The Loves of My Life, the latter of which was published just months before Edmund’s death.
From the early 1990s to the 2010s, Edmund and his husband, Michael Carroll, dated. During an interview with The Nation in 2014, the novelist revealed they had married in November of that year.
“I got married in November to my friend Michael Carroll, whom I’ve been with for 19 years. At least we didn’t rush into it,” Edmund quipped at the time.
When the writer died in 2025, Michael called his late husband “wise enough to be kind nearly always” in a public statement, obtained by The Guardian. He added that Edmund “was generally beyond exasperation and was generous. I keep thinking of something to tell him before I remember.”
Instead of attending Harvard University, where he was accepted, Edmund chose to attend the University of Michigan to major in Chinese.
